If I Told You What I've Done
by TotallyMarriedHer
Summary: Five events leading up to River's imprisonment and one after. Pre, during and post the Wedding of River Song.
1. A Beginning of the End

**If I Told You What I've Done**

**A/N:** This was intended as an extended one-shot when I wrote it many, many months ago - I've been writing it for a ridiculously long time and it's not even long - but I split it into two, the next part will be posted next Saturday. I wanted to explore the implications of Madame Kovarian taking some of River's memory, inspired by the quote that they were 'through with her head' or something and the events before and after TWoRS. **Disclaimer: **Still nothing belongs to me. Just to our friends and their friends at the BBC.

'_The spaceman's here! It's going to get me! It's going to eat me!' - Doctor Who - Melody Pond_

'_Would you leave me if I told you what I've done? Would you leave me if I told you what I've become?' - No Light, No Light - Florence Welch _

**The Morning of April 22nd, Lake Silencio**

River's head tightened in pain, so much so, that it felt like someone was intent on pounding her head until her skull cracked – a side effect of whatever they had drugged her with. Still, it was her heart that pounded quicker than her head in fear. Waking up drowsily with a feeling of helplessness sickening your insides because you're faced with a never-ending expanse of blue and were trapped inside a spacesuit did that to a person.

Not that River would ever admit it.

She still felt as powerless as when Madame Kovarian's men had held her down. Over the course of her life, she'd had plenty of times when all hope slipped through your fingers like sand – when the fear for the unchangeable future crept up on you and strangled you as quietly a shadow. That was the last feeling that registered before her body sunk down into the chair, before she succumbed to the darkness – and her murderous fate finally found her.

Slowly but surely, the fogginess of her mind was starting to clear (another pleasantry of the drug). When she should have worked out ways to escape her fate, River found herself searching through the fog shrouding the memories of her past. She'd had injections before, hadn't she? There were no marks on this body to say so, but when she was younger, when she was Melody, she was sure it was a different story.

Injections were frequent occurrences, routine, she recollected. _Medicine._ The words of another formed in her head, bold and bright; they were like the forgotten melody of your favourite childhood song. _Take your medicine like a good girl. _

She didn't know whose words they were. But they played over in her head, a memory with no face to it like so many of her childhood memories. Since she had spent most of her adult life separating herself from the person she used be, relieving her early years wasn't something she willingly did every day. When she had wanted to forget, remembering hadn't seemed such a problem.

It did now. Particularly, with her captor's words also fresh in her mind, "we were far too thorough" with your head. River wondered how thorough? How much had she forgotten? The woman had looked at her with a familiarity that a mother might have to a rebellious but loved child when she had been stranger, placing the head of the spacesuit down with a glint in her aging eyes.

_The spacesuit. _Not even Kovarian being 'thorough' with her head would rid her of that word and all the shadowy memories attached. No one got over their childhood fears or banished of their first demons – not truly.

The rough memories of the spacesuit were almost disconnected to the person she was now. They were like grainy images - of a child held captive for days in a spacesuit screaming for help with no one to hear - that belonged to another child and she was someone simply watching on as powerless and fearful as the child. A child so in fear because once you were in that spacesuit, you'd become the monster, other people's fear. No one had taken that memory from River.

And here she was: a prisoner once more. Only this time she would escape.

No matter what.

**5:02PM, April 22****nd, When Time Froze and The Universe Took The Doctor's Place**

She'd had some sort of plan, of course she had. She wasn't like the Doctor, when he just hoped for things to turn out well and unravel without too much death. That plan had centred getting away from the lakeside of Lake Silencio without anyone dead and work from there with just a hell of a lot of determination, her wits, hallucinogenic lipstick and a gun she would soon acquire . . . then maybe call on some emperors of Rome, flirt with a few American presidents and say hello to and catch up with an Egyptian Queen.

It took her some days of journeying through a corrupted universe – maybe exploiting that fact to her best advantage – where the greatest Egyptian Pharaohs appeared on cookery shows, Victorian cabs ferried businessmen around, Roman chariots paraded beside them, where new posters for new, sold-out Shakespeare plays were everywhere on lampposts, Henry the Eight was on his Seventh wife, the Magna Carter had been revised and The War of the Roses had just entered its second year. Simply, the cliché of an Archaeologist's _dream come true. . . _

It took some skills of flirtation, quick thinking and an awful lot of manipulation but somehow River scored it all, headquarters, an army of guards, a team of scientists and some of the most powerful people wrapped round her finger but most of all _her._ That woman. She was second on the list, first was her Mother and father, safe and well even if they couldn't remember each other, then the hunt of Madame Kovarian consumed her – a name River had acquired through a lot of visits to the 1920's speakeasies in the corrupted universe that every criminal suddenly favoured to lurk in.

As far as The Doctor was concerned, River would allow him to hunt her out. That man didn't _deserve _to be wanted by her she knew, even if he was. After she'd recovered after Berlin and worked for her doctorate, he tumbled into her life now and then again, checked up on her and tried to guide her to the woman he was desperate for her to turn into. Or she tumbled into his life, kept him on his toes and showed him that some of that troublesome Melody would remain forever in her.

He made her think she was safe. He made her believe, day by day, that she was worth more than just the label of a weapon, that she could be valued for more than that. He made her believe she could finally be free and be the person she wanted to be. Well, he forgot to leave out the tiny detail that it was all an illusion and the spacesuit had always been waiting for her.

Just like her. The bitch.

Every so often, River had the guards leave Kovarian tied to a chair in the centre of the headquarters of their base, so she wouldn't miss out on witnessing River and the scientists making sure that the universe remained corrupted – that the Doctor remained alive. So Kovarian knew she'd lost every second of every hour.

Presently, River cast an annoyed glare at Kovarian held captive in the middle of the room and shoved the folders in her hand down to one of the desks there. It had taken days to get those folders, minutes to read that they were of little use to her. As far as River knew, there was nothing, no official files and no pieces of information, nothing on paper or record or database about the past of Melody Pond despite her effort to find something.

Kovarian picked up on River's behaviour, like she always did and steeled herself for another inquisition by River. Kovarian waited for the countless questions about The Silence she would never answer for as long as she lived. Kovarian decided to remind her that the questions were fruitless.

"You won't find any files."

"I will," River turned to Kovarian with a sharp voice.

"We covered our tracks well."

"I'm an archaeologist; I kick up the dust and dirt of tracks for a living."

"You're a killer."

River gave no reaction. This second Amy was tracking down the Doctor. He'd be here soon. There was no need to give Kovarian a reaction and the satisfaction of it. She wouldn't have to kill the Doctor. She wouldn't have to do anything she didn't want to.

"Go on," Kovarian offered then pressed her lips into a thin line. River snapped out of the thought flickering over and over in her mind, levelled her eyes with the woman opposite her. "Go ahead, do what you want to do."

River went to spit out a biting retort but Kovarian beat her to it. "I wonder how many ways of making me talk and murdering me your clever little brain is processing at the minute. There's the easy one for a start." Kovarian laughed the last word and looked River up and down with a disgusted fascination. "If the fact you always carry a gun isn't enough proof that I succeeded and _he _lost I don't know what is." Anger bubbled in River's throat, inwardly she cursed at the instinct pulling on her to draw her gun and point it at the other woman's head.

"But they're other ways, other things just waiting to act as weapons around us. We always did teach you to act inventively if the time called for it."

"The girl you taught how to murder is using that training to figure how to murder you?" River questioned the irony with as much nonchalance as she could manage. "Face it. You lost, Kovarian."

"Think that if you want. But this is far from over, Melody." The belittling use of her former name got under River's skin just as intended; she hated the fact Kovarian clearly knew more about her own childhood and upbringing than River herself could remember. That was the only reason River hadn't walked out the room yet.

"Try anything. And it will be over, you won't leave this place alive," River gave up trying to hold the threat back and let the anger completely consume her for a moment. "You don't even recognise me and you want my corpse," Kovarian continued, "You can't even bring The Doctor's back."

"Maybe you didn't wire your psychopath quite as good as you thought," River replied icily.

"I know," Kovarian sighed, "you turned out as such woman yet such a failure and disappointment."

"No one's disappointed but you."

"_He is_. He can't stand it that you'll a murderer. He's got to much of his own blood on his hands, to hold your bloody ones as well." A new type of rage flamed in River's eyes at his mention as Kovarian persisted. "He does like you though, I'll give you that. Normally, he has to find young girls and make them obsess over him till the point they'd give their live for him. It takes time. But you found him out and just fell into his arms."

"It's not like that!" Kovarian smiled a thin line at River's rage.

"It is fascinating. Your complete infatuation with him, that you think its love, when it's just what we trained you to be – obsessed with him, with his murder."

Something inside River snapped. The echo of a fired bullet erupted across the room. Soon after, Amy burst into the room at the sound. Speechless, her eyes rushed to take in the sight of an unhurt River and a surprisingly, untouched Kovarian. After that, her eyes found the bullet lodged in a wall the opposite end of the room. A spot that meant it would have flew over Kovarian's left shoulder to get there.

By the time, Amy turned to question River; River had put away her gun and was storming out the door. "What happened?"

"Someone had to bloody shut her up," River remarked, frowned because after a moment of stunned silence Kovarian started again calmly, "Your firing practice always did come in handy." River ignored her, turning out of the door with Amy at her side. Amy said, "Yeah, got another bullet left?"

River smiled at her comment. They'd made a good partnership, a good alliance over the weeks trying to keep the universe stuck at 5:02, waiting for the Doctor to show up. Yet, River still knew they were unspoken conversations waiting unsaid between them, subjects raw and avoided. _Why Amy never got her baby back. What actually happened to Melody Pond in 1969? The grief of having a missing child trained as a soldier. Growing up as a child without a mother to tell y__ou_:_ you are loved. _

They had Kovarian. They were winning the battle against her but both Amy and River had grown to accept this was a war that no one would win after all the loss caused by it.

Sometimes, River felt so disconnected to Amy – like she hardly knew her at all - that it seemed the only thing holding them together was the only thing they had in common: the Doctor. And she hated herself for it.

**5:02 PM, April 22****nd, The Pyramid **

Black was an unconventional colour for a wedding dress – as unconventional as the wedding – but River had a feeling early on that they were going to have an even more unconventional marriage. Still, it suited perfectly, with a splintered time on the brink of its own collapse. A cold and darkening universe of her creation was lost to its own untimely death and black wanted to eclipse everything.

She was probably facing several thousand life-sentences just for that: _pre-mediated destruction of the universe and everything in it with an awful lot of intent._ She doubted that they would actually let her plea insanity backed up by a psychopathic history if she ever faced trial. Well she was also probably still owed a dozen other convictions for when she was Mels, _attempted murder, driving under influence, various accounts of theft . . . clothes, motorbikes, cars. . . _

She'd long led a life of notoriety, messing things up for fun, and it sure as hell wouldn't go unnoticed any longer. The universe had messed her up, and she'd only returned that favour.

Psychopathic or not, she still knew the moment her lips touched his - the moment they were unofficially married - she was officially his murderer. She knew their kiss would be a good one; it'd get her locked up for the rest of her life. But she didn't care.

Or that the marriage was wrong. Any would be, when the backdrop of it was a dying universe. Convenience and an abrupt need overpowered the underlying need for marriage: love, equal and unconditional. That wasn't much of a foundation for a marriage, but then again, it wasn't much of a wedding, River knew.

But it was theirs. And that was all she cared for, he would live and she could let go of the strain of fighting to keep a dying universe in a state of sleep forever.

She may have wed a robot, alike to a man she'd sought to murder but it felt like him. Tasted like him. It tasted sweet. It meant her love would live and wouldn't she kill, steal and die for that? So a wife in a black dress and a murderer with a black heart, she kissed her husband back with unlawful intent.

**Close To Midnight, April 22****nd, Lake Silencio **

River would be lying if she said she really believed the Doctor would see her right after the wedding. The truth was she didn't think he'd see her for some time, his calls for her at the Lunar University whilst she was getting her Doctorate were a thing of a past; and he'd never seemed that really that attentive or bothered for her during those fleeting, careful visits. Maybe because he knew what she would do?

She expected for him to left alone, like some filthy secret already discarded in his past. To the rest of the universe he was meant to be dead. She was meant to be quiet, she didn't even try to visit her parents, explain that he was still alive right after the wedding. One day she would, yet that day could wait.

Tonight, she was still newly wed. He was finding shelter in the shadows whilst she was left on that terrible lakeside again in a country home to her early years and never a real home. It was the first time she'd felt this lost since her Melody Pond days, what did she do now? Run away? Try to find her husband? Hand herself in for murder? If she'd ever had any real identity, it was now that of a wanted criminal. Some adrenaline still rushed in her from that knowledge. She felt wonderfully alive, something uncommon in her Melody Pond days, with a life ahead to live that she wanted to without others deciding how it would be and she would try to fight to keep it like that for the rest of her life.

Her body still burned from the radioactive power of destroying the universe and reigniting it with one touch. She felt like trying to get away with anything. But here she found herself, in the dark of night, confronting her past in the hope of freedom. Sand was soft under her bare feet. The night was cool so a chill swept under the fabric of her clothes and the lake was an inky pool of dark blue in the distance, silent and still. The sky had cleared after a string of cloudy nights and a million specks of light littered the dark horizon.

One more speck of light burned at the tip of the match in her hand. It only took a few seconds to light up and one effortless flick of her wrist for it to fall to its descent. It swept through the air to land within a crease of the white fabric below which was laid upon wood. Ignited it. Nonchalantly, River stepped back to watch the spacesuit become rippled with flames. It served its purpose of murder, she served hers.

Finally, she killed her childhood monster. Though it may have seemed nothing, in that fire secrets and fears and childhood fates burnt and turned to ashes.

'_The spaceman is here! It's going to eat me!'_

Years of being conditioned for killing a spaceman as a child, hating it and hunting it down, in truth the one she hated the most, never was known as The Doctor. The spaceman that plagued you in dreams and chased you in life had been a suit feeding on the fear of a lost, little girl in a land she didn't belong in.

Sure, sometimes Melody had thought she was losing her mind after playing memory games with scary, silent men you could never place a face to though you knew were waiting in the dark, watching you. Sure, she'd been trained to lose her mind because of one woman's twisted visionary for a child that had been no saviour or salvation in the end.

Yet, it had always been the suit.

The spaceman coming to eat her up, that was the monster in the space fairy-tale of 1969. The one which always lurked around every dark corner and waiting for you.

Melody had been a clever girl, running away, calling up the President . . . though it hadn't changed the cold, bitter truth that the spaceman had always been coming for her. That it would get her. River should have learned that if you get yourself a new education, a new life to cover up your past one it still remained under there. It didn't vanish. It didn't go.

River was sure that soon enough what she'd done would catch up with her. Only one thing was different. There was no spaceman to get her. There was no longer any fate to kill. And no little, scared girl unable to change that.

That would all be lost in the fire.

**A/N: **Reviews are forever loved.


	2. The End of the Beginning

If I Told You What I've Done

**A/N:** The ending is a bit AU as this was written before Matt's regeneration on Trenzalore.

**A Couple of Months Later, The Planet Balaxium **

She'd long-lost them. River slowed down the horse she rode, face flushed from the chase and the cold air of the blue Balarium countryside of a planet that she hadn't had time to catch the name of. She'd lost them this time. The ring of something in her pocket nearly made her stop the horse altogether. She took the alien piece of tech she'd stolen hours ago out from her pocket. Her brows creased. It was a code breaker, worth thousands, of the highest technology and now sorely missed by its last owner but the _bottom line_ was the piece of metal in her possession cracked codes. _It was not meant to ring._

Experimentally, she put it to her ear. She didn't know what shocked her more, that a voice came through it or whose voice it was. "Hello," she recognised her husband's voice and frowned in an instant. They've hardly talked for months. "How the hell did you reach me again?" River said and waited impatiently for his explanation.

The Doctor wanted to answer that he'd been asking that question ever since River had flew into his life. He wanted to know how the hell she'd always managed to get his attention and phone number over the years but he refrained. "Well everyone likes a warm welcome," he retorted.

"I'm busy," she hissed at him through the phone, brushing back her hair with her fingers as the wind swept it up. "So I've heard. You keep going on like this and once they find you, they won't just put you in a cell." The Doctor decided that being blunt was the only thing that would get through to her. He didn't want to think about whatever horrors could be committed by someone claiming to carry out justice and the law when they have a criminal with River's reputation – someone who wants to arrest his wife.

"Whose says they'll find me?"

"River, listen to me! I don't want you getting yourself hurt. I don't want you getting yourself killed; if you go on like this the police won't just be after you." He lets his warning be ambiguous; God knows how many people hate her after her recent escapades.

"Sweet for you to care, my love. But you're one to talk about getting yourself killed."

"River, I know you're angry but-"She was fed up of his pleading.

"Fine, I'll hand myself in, that's what you want isn't it?"

". . . Yes." He takes a sigh before admitting it, surprised at her compliance.

"I'm not going quietly," she told him and hung up on him. How dare he ask her like that, when he was probably only concerned with making sure no one would find anything suspicious about his murderer going off free. Since the days had worn on after they wedding day, doubts had returned to River and she had grown unsure if he had ever truly cared for her – or just for his own skin. The doubts plagued like fear once the happiness of his avoidance of death had worn off like a drug.

However she found herself, one week later, at a prestigious event honouring the past work of Stormcage and its employees in partnership with the Shadow Proclamation with a fake name and fake I.D. She found herself sneaking in the building, lying, trespassing, and committing herself to another few decades of imprisonment with every breath she took.

She found herself at the behind of a stage in a room packed full of officers and officials and detectives waiting silently for the speeches to begin. River Song found herself taking centre stage, looking straight in the shocked eyes of the murder team she knew had her case – who'd spent the past months searching in vain for her – and announcing, "Hello boys."

The alarms rang just as she typed in the co-ordinates into a vortex manipulator she'd stolen from a gallery three weeks ago and disappeared with a smile.

She returned to the Lunar University, the only place she'd actually called home. She hadn't been there for a while and it felt good to breathe in the familiar smell of one of the empty lecture rooms. River had made up her mind that she'd hand herself in tomorrow. She knew tonight the officers of the Intergalactic Police Force would still be recovering from the embarrassment of today's event.

With a sigh, she sat down on one of the chairs in the lecture hall and wondered what to do now, maybe it was time she and The Doctor had a proper conversation and met up after all these months. Then she heard the voice of her old professor outside the room. "I'm telling you no one's in there!"

The doors to the lecture room swung open. For an instant, she foolishly thought it could be The Doctor – that thought was what cost her the time to enter the co-ordinates into the vortex manipulator on her wrist and escape. She could only stand rooted to the spot when two men clothed in a deep navy uniform burst into the room, guns aimed at her head. "Don't move."

River already had her gun out by the time he finished the order. Her old professor stood in shock after he'd run in after them. River risked a shout directed to him, knowing she knew everyone officially assigned to the search for her and that these two intruders weren't on that list. "Professor, get out of here now. Get to safety." The professor fled the lecture room and River realised he'd go to call the police and get even more people with a gun at her head. However, judging by the ruthless cold expression dominating the intruder's faces, maybe having gunslingers she knew were _restrained _by the law wouldn't be such a bad thing now.

"Drop the weapon, Melody Pond!"

"Or what?" She smirked but inside her head sped up as her mind raced to name the men. She hadn't seen them earlier at the event. They weren't part of the team after her, so who were they? Who did they work for? The answer of Kovarian made an unhelpful taunt at her in the back of her head and she pushed it away. Her eyes never left theirs as they edged father towards her.

River spotted the nod one of the men gave over her shoulder and went to run just a little too late as she fingered out the two men wouldn't alone. A third man who'd entered from the back door of the room pulled her from behind, turning them both around forcibly. He slammed her body into the wall, River hissed out a sigh at the impact, her head turned flat against the surface of the wall. The gun was prised from her grip, her arms yanked behind her back.

She didn't know who the hell the guy thought he was but if he wanted the arrest of a criminal then she was damn going to give him one. It was when they went to handcuff her that her training kicked in. Instinct kicked in. Fight or flight. She chose both. Pivoting on her foot, she jammed her elbow into one of the officer's stomach with a force that had him staggering; she snatched the gun on the belt round his waist.

Ran. The other guy blocked her path. She aimed the gun perfectly in line with the spot in between his eyes. He went to shoot. Her impulse was quicker but her bullet ricocheted off the wall to the ground. The gun had slipped from her hand, as another one crashed into her skull, throwing her and the shot of her gun off-balance. It was the third man she'd escaped from and from the force of blow, he wasn't very pleased with the fact.

Pain ricocheted through her head from the impact of his gun, for a while, the room went blurry. "Melody Pond I am arresting you for the murder of The Doctor, attempted destruction of the universe, assault, attempted murder. . .'

The gruff and gleeful sound of the officer reeling off the details of her arrest hardly registered in her head yet the bite of the handcuffs round her wrists did. She knew whoever had put them on here hadn't been anywhere near that event earlier. They couldn't have found her so quick.

"Who are you?" River asked as they pulled her up from the ground.

"People who've been waiting a long time to get you Miss Pond," he stated, trying to appear intimidating, "But don't worry. We'll get you to prison safe and sound."

"Took you long enough, standards are slipping with law enforcement these days."

"Whose says we're not any restrictions of law?" He answered her warningly yet the irritation at her comment showed as he said it. He pushed a hand to her back, starting to make her move forward, not wanting to make any more talk with a woman he found arrogant and insufferable minute by minute.

"And it's Mrs Song by the way." River added. The man didn't retort. To him, it didn't matter what she thought her name was, as long as it went with her for several hundred years into a small, grey cell and he got paid by the overpaid, hopeless police officers who'd hired him.

**The First Night of Twelve Consecutive Life Sentences, Stormcage **

The people here seriously needed an education on that there were in fact other colours other than grey and black that existed, River thought to herself lying on her back on a the horrible cot that served for a bed nowadays. The walls were grey. The bed was grey. The rain was grey. She even felt she herself fading to grey sometimes. She was so sick of grey that watching for shadows, their new movements of colour had become a habit.

And she called out to one in the corner of her eye she'd seen move.

"I know you were at my trial." He didn't reply and she didn't move from her bed, letting his shadow reside in the others outside her cell bars. Her plea of guilty resonated in her head along with the memory of one precise moment in the trial earlier. That electricity, that sense of awareness pricking her - the only feeling a time machine so alive could give to its child. She felt his ship's presence, not him. Yet she knew he was watching, knew he had probably watching the trial and it's entirety, safe in his invisible box whilst the freedom of her future was irrevocably damaged by one word of guilty.

She wondered if The Doctor watched as she was led away, taken down the stairs of the courtroom, legally found his murderer. She wondered what he was thinking then. And wondered why she cared.

'Well I knew you weren't you going to turn up in the witness-box," her words bit at him with a rawness that told him of her anger.

"Can I come in?" He asked softly.

"Do what you want." The Doctor opened her bars with a flick of his sonic screwdriver after disabling the alarm system for her cell and a few security cameras. He walked into the light and up to River, watching her staring at the ceiling. He gasped at the nasty, red bruise on her cheek bone, the red angry against her pale skin. It made his voice worried even though he's seen her in far worst states over the years he'd loved her. "River?"

"I don't know who that is!" She turned to her side, sat up and swung her legs off the bed. "I don't who know who you want me to be anymore. But I'm not her!"

"You are."

"Then tell me, Doctor. Why there is still some part of me wanting to kill you? And what happened to the person before me?" He was lost in what she meant but felt the fire of her rage like it was warmth on his face. "What did they do to me?"

It struck him, struck his brain. Everything fell into place. Everything was clear. All the stuff he'd heard, all the cars hijacked, all the networks hacked, all the powerful men ticked off, all the antiques stole, all the stunts and all her reckless behaviour in the past.

"You've tried to find out," he realised what everything had been for. She nodded. "Maybe's what left in the past is best," he told her, fearing that anymore days of her reckless behaviour wouldn't be wise. He didn't want her search killing her, more than literally. Even if she needed answers. The identity of his people were everything, his identity was everything to him. He understood her need for answers more than anyone but he wouldn't have her risking so much for it. "I know the past isn't normally worth the danger it holds."

"It has its results," she said in a casual way. "What sort?" She ignored his question, "Not enough, though. And, yes, to you next protest, I am going to look for enough results." She warned him before he could protest to her plan to prolong her search for answers.

His hands reached up to hold the lapels of his jacket but dropped before they skimmed over the fabric as he decided on "Okay."

"Okay?" Was that all?

"Yes, okay, as long as you'll let me help you." The warmth and companionship that glowed in his eyes was something River saw first with an immediate instinct of suspicion then a realisation that maybe the idea of truth didn't always have to be rejected. Maybe he just cared enough to want to help. Maybe this enigma of a man stood in front of her, her target to kill and her husband yet somewhere whose true intentions Melody Pond had still to fully work out, cared. He knew her more than she knew him. He already had her trust and love and the connection he thought to her was left for her to figure out instead of the other way round.

"What do you know already?" River asked with slightly more accusation in her voice than planned and a horrible thought that maybe he'd had the answers all along. The Doctor knew that the distrust is his fault just like he knew the fact she can't remember her past was his fault. That the weapon of Melody Pond was his fault.

"River," he sat down wearily on the edge of her bed and began a speech plucked from the depth of his hearts," I spent years searching for you. Madame Kovarian. Who gave her orders? Who took you? Why?" He can remember the defeatism, the humiliating and sickening sense of failure and blame left to burn in his veins after Demon's Run like some sort of poison that infected your body and drove you insane. It only took a few days of no lead for the search, no Melody and the sound of dying hope in Amy and Rory's voices when they called him and he had nothing to say back for him to know defeat. He was defeated in a battle he couldn't afford to lose more than any other. "And the years of failure drove me insane. I still don't know much. What I do know, however, is that Melody Pond, River Song; you are one of the most infuriating, stubborn, reckless people I know. You are the most fiercely loyal, strong, remarkable, beautiful person I know. You're human. You're not. You have bad days like all of us; you have the most brilliant of them. You've got bad things in you past, you've done things you wished you hadn't. Who hasn't? But you are remembered and known for far greater things than my death. You manage that easily," he smirked fondly at all the memorable moments he'd shared with her in the past, "and you are loved. Always and completely by me."

The Doctor finished and cursed himself inwardly at the emotion welling up in his throat and all those memories in his head. "Doctor?" River noticed the vacant look in his eye; her voice pulled him out of his memories. He looked up at her, having stared down at the floor for the past couple of minutes. Her eyes were glistening but her smile was bright; the one he had grown to love.

"Are you going somewhere tonight?" He remembered the tuxedo he wore, his smart black attire. "What time are you from?" He knew she was bound to notice and smart enough to say next, "You did the wedding a long time ago, didn't you? "He probably shouldn't have turned in this suit for risk of spoilers.

"It doesn't matter." With that he bounced up on to his feet to stand and she knew there was a reason he wouldn't tell her if she asked again. He kissed her on the cheek, waltzed to her cell bars in a clumsy fashion that could only be his. "I've got to go. I forgot, sorry, younger me will me here soon. Well I say soon. Sorry, his driving was a bit off this night."

Later River will recognize that particular comment as something he would never normally admit to. Only later would she see that something was wrong.

"He may be here in a minute or the early hours of the morning."

"The first official day of my sentence," she added as he made his way out of her cell, to look back at her through the bars. "If you don't want to see him, tell him, push him away. He's a bit young, eager to impress." He told her thinking back to her anger towards him earlier this evening and thought to how enthusiastic and oblivious his younger self will be.

"Why, what do you remember me doing?" There was a playful tone to her voice.

"Spoilers," he called back re-entering the shadows that lay in the corridor outside her cell and going back to his blue box. That deliciously tempting word left her with a yearning for adventure, an excitement for the days to come with the Doctor. River decided that the search for her past and its mysteries could wait a night. Tonight, she expected an outing with her husband and have fun causing a bit of trouble if needed, after the dreary days of her trial.

She watched the shadows as the sound of the TARDIS's disappearance faded from the corridor. When she turned back to her bed she caught the sight of a small black box and a note reading _To my wife. (Don't worry I've planned a paradox. As long as you have this from now on, I will have the exact same one too with me, even if our timelines are in sync. It's all timey-wimey. As long as the two of them don't touch, it'll be fine. I hope.) _River's brow rose in curiosity; she prised open the box. A length of black fabric unfolded and fell fluttering on to the covers of her bed. Picking it up, she wound the soft material through her hands. _What sort of paradox was he planning? _

The bow tie was the same one The Doctor had worn in the past or kept in his pocket to touch now and then again when he'd the past had caught up with him or he'd lost someone, anyone. Just to remind him that the comfort was there. All of the younger selves of his eleventh incarnation would have the bow tie and from now on, River from would have it as well, from her first days to her last.

River folded the black material of what was their wedding ring in the box he'd left. She thought about where exactly the Doctor who'd visited her was going if he no longer thought he should have the bow tie any more.

"Took you time," she teased, "'I'm not waiting up again if you're going to arrive as late as this. I'll escape and find you myself if need be." Her smile made the warning of her words meaningless. The Doctor stepped out of his just landed TARDIS into River's cell and grinned. "Sorry, I got caught up in a bit of traffic." River laughed, knowing now that that was a lie and it'd had been his bad driving skills that had accounted for his lateness. "I'll drive if you like tonight," she offered, waited for his protest.

"I'm perfectly capable of driving it myself."

"I never said you weren't." She folded her arms over her chest.

"Oh . . . well," he felt a bit embarrassed at taking immediate offense to her probably well-intended offer.

"But I wouldn't go as far as to say perfectly capable, Sweetie," River teased and went into the TARDIS, looking forward to the evening ahead and the years ahead with the man who followed after her. He had a feeling of apprehension and excitement inside him, this was it. This was the beginning. Not the beginning of their story. The beginning of the chapter they could begin to write themselves how they wanted. Sometimes the ink penning it would be scrawled in a mad, reckless rush, swirled in happiness and content, pressed into the paper in fury and pain and blurred by their tears. One day the ink would dry out, they both knew. But the story would still be theirs.

Watching the women he loved step into the time machine that lately only seemed like a proper home when her presence was there, The Doctor promised to the give this chapter of their story the best beginning he could

**Later On, The TARDIS**

The Doctor closed the TARDIS door and immediately he felt it – the inevitable. He let his body be consumed by the feeling for the first time that night. The TARDIS drifted into space knowingly without the Doctor's instructions. The old girl knew what was happening. He'd managed to stop it when visiting River, making sure she knew she wasn't alone in her early days and that his younger self would make sure of that. He knew his younger self would help her find her past and share her future with love. He'd given her the bow tie he'd kept safe since their wedding day all those years ago. So she would have it to keep until knowingly she would travel back in time and give him the black bow tie before their wedding day for him to use. Then the paradox would begin.

But now the Doctor was alone, his top shirt button was open without a bow tie to pin proudly there and he so very, very old. Now he felt the energy coursing through his veins.

A warm orange ignited at his fingertips.

**A/N:** The ending is like that as there was an intended, abandoned sequel about River's search for the past and getting her memories back. But yeah GCSE's happened and now I'm up to my neck in school stuff for the next five months and all fan fiction has been put on hold.


End file.
